


Girl's Night

by Schistosity



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, I just want them to interact more please god, Pidge uses swear words, Team Bonding, and references a lot of mid-tier sci fi shows, girls supporting girls, in other words pidge is me in high school
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 00:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11429478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schistosity/pseuds/Schistosity
Summary: When Allura asked Pidge to spend a “girl's night” with her, Pidge set her expectations extremely low.In which girl's night takes an unexpected turn, shit gets straight up Alien (1979), and our heroes are in the vents, again. You know, normal girly stuff.





	Girl's Night

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes in life you have to write the Pidge-Allura bonding fic you want to see in the world (because god knows no one's gonna give it to you). I originally wrote this for a friend just before season 2 came out, so it’s probably not super canon compliant at this point. Who cares about details though, we need more girls-supporting-girls in this dark and terrible world and I’m here to deliver.
> 
> @voltron execs pls let these girls interact in season 3 I'm physically wasting away from lack of female content thank you.

The room was quiet, so quiet that Pidge was scared to even breathe.

The silence was broken only by the occasional, distant chittering of her new roommate, unseen but oh-so there. It was still unaware of her presence, but Pidge didn’t know how long it would stay that way.

Subconsciously, Pidge reached a hand into her pocket, feeling for her bayard. With a jolt she remembered she was unarmed, and her fingers closed around nothing. She hadn’t realised how used to her weapon she’d become, but now she didn’t have it and she felt utterly naked. Reality settled in.

She was trapped in a dark room with no weapon.

She was trapped in a dark room with no weapon, and _something_ was in there with her.

Girl’s night sucked.

* * *

 

_two hours earlier._

 

When Allura asked Pidge to spend a “girl's night” with her, Pidge set her expectations extremely low.

Makeup… hair… talking about boys, maybe? (There were only 5 boys on the ship though, so maybe they wouldn’t do that last one).

The thought made her shiver.

It wasn't that she didn't _like_ Allura; The older girl was an undeniably good person and a great friend. She'd proved herself time and time again to be a capable leader, a talented fighter, and an intelligent woman. Pidge would never admit it, but she felt a little honoured to have Allura as someone she could call a friend.

That didn't mean the only two girls on Team Voltron didn't have their differences.

Appearance was a big one. Pidge supposed at one point in time she had sort of given her appearance thought, but now she prefered to wear whatever was available and easy over anything particularly “nice”. She dressed for practicality and ease of movement; you couldn’t weld in a dress.

That wasn't even taking into account her hair situation; A perpetual tangle even before it was cut.

Allura was different. From the moment Pidge met her she had been jaw-droppingly gorgeous, elegant and put together. Allura was six feet of fine, silver hair, unblemished skin, and lady-like grace in a floor-length gown.

Pidge was not those things. Pidge was sweaty brows and oily hands and rough, self-cut hair. Pidge was 14 (oh god, maybe 15 now?) and 5’3. Pidge had a tendency to get too hyper-focused on projects and wouldn't clean her two sets of clothes for days on end.

Actually, she thought, she should probably do that soon.

Pidge wasn't _girly_. The other paladins seemed to understand this, never questioning her dress or lack of interest in girly things. She had thought Allura had understood too, that their interests were just… different.

But then Allura had invited her to a “girl's night.”

‘Lance told me about it!’ She had said eagerly when Pidge asked what she meant. ‘We can take an evening to learn about each other… hang out! I thought it would be a good way to bond.’

Pidge could see that Allura was trying her hardest. _She wants to spend time with you_ , a voice had said, _what could a little girly shit hurt?_

A lot, Pidge had thought, my pride for one.

But she had said yes anyway.

Now Pidge was sitting in her lion working on some wiring, an act of therapeutic fiddling that never went anywhere. The lions were too complex for her to decipher without Hunk and Coran's help, but anything was better than thinking about what she was going to do that evening.

Her wristband chimed a soft alarm. She had rigged it as a 24-hour clock under Shiro's suggestion. Time moved weirdly in space, so he had suggested synchronized clocks to keep them all on the same page – getting a full night's sleep, showing up to meals, the works. Lance's self-care obsessed ass loved the sleep schedules, but Pidge knew Shiro wasn't using it.

There were a lot of things she noticed, a lot of things she worried about.

But she couldn’t worry about them now, because her bracelet was telling her Allura was meeting her at the bridge in ten minutes.

Pidge groaned.

‘Hey, Green,’ she sighed, leaning back in the pilot's chair. ‘D'you think I should go?’

No response from the giant metal lion.

‘I mean, Allura’s great, but I'm just worried she's going to make this a “thing”.’

The silence was palpable.

‘I’m just… I'm not _into_ girly stuff,’ Pidge continued, tapping the console nervously. ‘I'm scared Allura doesn't get that. I'm scared she doesn't _like_ that… she's just so…’

Girly wasn't the right word. Allura didn't fit the fickle image the word conjured. Allura was loving and gentle, feminine even when commanding a battleship or judo-flipping a Galra. She was a princess starved for female interaction. She was just so…

‘She's just so… Allura,’ Pidge said. ‘I think she wants to share that with someone like her, but… what if I'm not what she had in mind?’

The lion, of course, said nothing.

Pidge sighed and closed the hatch she was working on. After shoving her tools back into her pockets she stood up, checking her watch to see she had seven minutes to meet Allura. She eyed her backpack, which was hanging over the cockpit chair and wondered if she should bring it. It probably wasn’t necessary, but something in Pidge told her she would be happier with some of her stuff on her. She slung it over her shoulder.

‘See ya later, girl,’ she said to her lion as she exited the cockpit. She trudged out of the room, and it may have been her imagination, but she could've sworn she heard a suspiciously lion-like laugh as the doors closed behind her.

Pidge arrived two minutes late, which was what happened when you spent all your time in the bottom levels of a ship with a command deck on the top.

‘Sorry I'm late!’ She cried as she burst through the doors to the bridge. ‘I was down with the lions.’

‘Hello, Pidge!’ Allura beamed.

Allura was wearing something similar to her normal jumpsuit; tight pants and shirt, but had topped it off with a puffy, stylish jacket.

Pidge wondered why she needed warm clothes? Were they going outside?

 _That’s a stupid question_ , a voice in her head told her, _of course you’re not going outside, you’re in space._

However stupid it was, Pidge would admit the cold embrace of the void outside wasn’t the worst way this night could end up.

Especially if Allura’s plans involved makeup.

In her new, very fashionable clothes Allura conjured up a surprisingly vivid image in Pidge's head of the exercise-mad hipsters she used see around Seattle. Allura looked ready to get up at 4am and do yoga, or drink tea out of a mason jar. Pidge did not want to do any of that.

‘Ready to go?’ Allura asked.

‘Yeah,’ Pidge said, trying to smile. ‘Let’s go.’

 

It occurred to Pidge only halfway up the elevator that she actually had no idea where they were going or what they were doing. The elevator they were taking up was one Pidge had never used, and it took them into a part of the castle Pidge hadn’t had the opportunity to explore, one of the out of the way sections only recently powered up. To top it all off Allura seemed unusually jittery, bouncing on her heels nervously.

‘So where are we going?’ Pidge asked.

‘Well… I didn’t really know what to do for our girl’s night,’ Allura said, ‘so I decided we should mix work with fun!’

She pointed to the map of the castle on the right of the elevator door, indicating a part of it Pidge had never entered.

‘Before we replaced the castle's crystal we were running on barely any power,’ Allura explained. ‘After that, Coran and I began to open up more of the castle to see what was left. We planned to make it something of a secondary mission, but after… things got hectic, we didn't have time to explore further.’

‘What do you think is up here?’ Pidge asks.

‘Not sure, but I thought you might want to come help me explore it. You’ve taken extremely well to Altean technology, and I thought you might enjoy seeing more of the castle!’

Pidge didn’t know what to say. This was nothing like what she had expected. An exploration mission to undiscovered parts of the castle? Seeing technology that had been untouched for 10,000 years? It was a dream come true.

‘Wow, Allura,’ she said. ‘This is... awesome, thank you so much…’

‘You don’t need to thank me, Pidge, I’m very glad to have you along! I think this will be very fun!’

The elevator began to slow and the doors parted onto a darkened hallway. Pidge's brain kicked into high gear. She had readjusted her assumptions on the ride up: Whatever the point of girl’s night was, Allura seemed to have missed it.

But this was so much better.

Allura began to fiddle with a panel by the elevator, and very soon the entire floor seemed to activate.

‘We can’t power it all up at once,’ she explained. ‘The lights are on now, along with life-support and ventilation, but there’s not a whole lot of heating.’

It _was_ very cold up here, as soon as she had stepped out of the elevator, Pidge could see her breath in front of her, rising like a little cloud into the air.

When the lights turned on by themselves it was not in the familiar way the ones below did. These lights hadn’t seen people under them in thousands of years. It was enough to make Pidge’s heart race with excitement. The hall was much bigger than expected, and was lined with door after door ripe for exploration.

‘There was an episode of _Stargate Atlantis_ like this…’ Pidge breathed.

‘What's _Stargate Atlantis_?’ Allura asked, turning away from the panel.

‘Oh, uh, it was a TV show my dad and I used to watch,’ Pidge explained. ‘It’s about a bunch of humans who travel through a portal to an abandoned alien city and have to use a combination of big guns and street smarts to fight off evil aliens.’

Allura laughed. ‘That kind of sounds like us.’

‘Yeah.’ Pidge laughed too. ‘God, now that I think about it… their city had the same issues this place does – oh my god, it even had shields and flew and stuff? Am I living _Stargate Atlantis_?’

Allura seemed to find this funny, if not a little confusing, and motioned for Pidge to follow her down the hall.

‘I’m not sure what kind of things this “stargate atlantis” had in its structure, but the Castle of Lions is set up to function just like our castles on Altea, it has everything. There’s no telling what could be on this floor.’

Allura talked more about the possible places on the floor, every so often stopping to scan a door with a bracer on her wrist, then looking over its details and moving on. This continued for a few minutes before she stopped in her tracks in front of a door so fast Pidge barreled into her.

‘I knew it!’ Allura gasped, eyes sparkling. She closed the details on her bracer before Pidge could see what she was looking at, and swung around to face her with fervor.

‘Close your eyes, Pidge.’

‘Uhh, why?’

‘It’s a surprise, just do it… _pleeease_ _?_ ’ She grinned.

Pidge closed her eyes, and felt Allura's hands on her shoulders. Allura guided her towards the door and seemed to position her just in front of it. There was the sound of a keypad being pressed, and then of doors opening.

Pidge heard a soft noise and through her eyelids saw the space in front of her fill with light.

‘Okay…’ she heard Allura say from in front of her, ‘Open!’

Pidge opened her eyes, and was immediately floored by what she saw.

A lot of the places she had been since joining Voltron had been, well, _alien_. It was an obvious problem, but still a problem, and one she had had difficulty getting used to. Everywhere they went things were so different and hard to recognize. She had once complimented an alien leader on their gorgeous fountains, before being told they were in fact the bathrooms of that world. Lance and Hunk had once gotten in trouble for mistaking a planet’s nursery for a kitchen (How were they supposed to know the children of that world needed to sleep in 375°F temperatures in cubicles that looked suspiciously like ovens).

But this room was instantly familiar.

‘A library?!’ Pidge gasped.

‘Ta-da!!’ Allura did a little jazz-hands motion and smiled.

There were no books, but it was obviously a library. It was a huge atrium-like chamber, with rows upon rows of shelves piled high to the ceiling. Ladders and spiraling staircases flanked the room on every side, and long tubular elevator shafts led up to the higher levels. The middle of the room was covered in long banks of computer terminals and more shelving. And the shelves were stocked, almost overflowing, with hundreds of glowing data drives.

‘This is the castle’s archive,’ Allura explained. ‘It houses data from Altea, everything from army personnel records to children’s books.’

‘It’s amazing,’ Pidge whispered. ‘How long have you known about this being here?’

‘Not long. To be honest, I forgot it was here,’ Allura said. ‘When Coran told me he had possibly located it I was worried the data may have been corrupted or destroyed during the Castle’s 10,000 years of disuse…’

‘It looks to be in okay condition,’ Pidge observed, moving closer to examine a nearby row of glowing drives. ‘Is that why you wanted to come here? To check the condition of the archives?’

She straightened up and looked back at Allura, only to see the other girl holding two small scanners.

She grinned and held one out to Pidge. ‘I was hoping we could check them together.’

Pidge was beginning to like girl’s night after all.

 

The archive room was segmented into two sections, separated by a large wall and archway that seemed to slice the room in half down the middle. Allura told Pidge that the west side of the room, where they had entered, held records of literature and pictures from Altea, whereas the east side of the room held personnel records from the military and the Castle. Pidge was interested to examine both, but Allura was obviously more keen to go through the west room first, so the two of them decided to start there and work their way slowly to the other end of the archives.

The west side of the room had a lot of interesting records: historical books, fiction, films, photographs, news articles. It also had physical archives, objects that had been kept in here like some kind of museum exhibit. There were old weapons, books, and tools, but what really caught Pidge’s eye was the armour.

It was a suit of paladin armour, though very different from Pidge’s. It looked to be a bit more old fashioned and had no colour. It was in the back corner of the room on one of the raised balconies.

‘What’s this?’ She asked, calling down to Allura on the ground floor.

Allura looked up from the drive she was scanning and Pidge watched her face fall as she caught sight of what Pidge was showing her.

‘It’s ceremonial armour,’ Allura said, a little glumly. ‘It belongs to the royal family, the ones who pilot the Castle.’

‘What’s it for?’

‘Technically it’s for the same thing as yours - piloting a lion.’ She seemed to notice Pidge’s incredulous look at this, and began to explain. ‘The pilots of the Castle are supposed to be able to pilot a lion in a paladin’s stead. This armour is largely symbolic; it’s white because it can be any colour. It’s functional though… It has all the same features as yours.’

‘Can you do that? Pilot a lion?’

‘I very much doubt it, Pidge,’ Allura said with a sigh. ‘My father never did, I can’t recall any of my ancestors doing it either, and I don’t even know if I _could_ bond to a lion like you do. Let’s hope I never have to.’

Allura looked distinctly more sullen than before, so Pidge decided to divert the subject to something more plain. She came back down to the ground floor and began to rifle around in the shelves. Eventually, she pulled out a glowing drive that looked a tad bigger than the others and opened it.

From inside, a swirl of holographic images sprung forward, all landscapes and pictures of cities and buildings. Towering mountains and rolling fields, glittering metropolises and small towns alike.

‘Wow,’ Pidge breathed.

Allura gasped. ‘That’s Altea!’

‘It is?!’ Pidge turned to see Allura leaning over the drive beside her. Allura’s eyes were wide, and her expression was an odd mix of shock and happiness.

She smiled in disbelief and pointed at a picture of a mountain range.

‘That was very close to my home! I used to go there as a child with my father!’

Pidge paid close attention as Allura pointed out more and more places, often swerving into anecdotes and stories about the places she had visited back home. They sat there for a long time, Allura telling stories, Pidge listening. She was caught up in the older girl's words, barely feeling time pass as she wove tales of her home and old life.

‘Oh! Look at this one Pidge!’

Allura pointed at a hologram and Pidge leaned closer to inspect it. It was a city, huge and sparkling, with the sun rising behind it. The buildings were all tall, crystalline spires and towers, reflected in the water of a startlingly still ocean.

‘Wow!’ She gasped. ‘It's beautiful.’

‘It was our capital city,’ Allura said with only a hint of sadness. ‘The buildings were constructed partially from crystals – all self-sustaining, clean energy.’

‘That's amazing.’ Pidge looked in awe at the skyline, entranced by the technology, the architecture, the engineering...

Her eye was caught by a lone building on the left.

‘Haha, no way…’

‘Hmm?’ Allura frowned a little.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ Pidge assured her. ‘It's just that that one kind of looks like the Space Needle.’ She pointed it out.

Allura looked at the building in question. ‘What's the Space Needle?’

‘It's a building in Seattle – That's the city I lived in on Earth,’ Pidge explained. ‘It's a big tower.’

‘What does it do?’

‘Nothing much really. It has nice views over the city, though.’

‘Do you miss it there?’

‘I missed it while I was on Earth, to be honest, but even more now.’

‘What was it like?’

‘Wet,’ Pidge laughed. ‘It rained a lot.’

‘Coran told me about that… apparently your atmosphere expels water instead of jagged rocks?’

‘Yup. It's pretty though, my house was by the ocean, so we always got amazing views.'

‘Sounds lovely.’

‘It was... it is…’

Allura closed the hologram. ‘You'll surely see it again,’ she said.

‘Hopefully,’ Pidge said. ‘In the meantime I guess it's good we can relate. We both miss home.’

Allura looked down at the dormant holograms in her hands. Her hair was shielding her eyes like a silvery curtain, but Pidge thought she might be crying.

‘You should keep that one,’ Pidge said softly. Allura nodded and slipped it into her pocket. She looked up, smile wide on her face.

‘Should we keep looking?’

There was a clank to their right.

Both girls looked towards the noise, through the archway that segmented the room, down to the far east wall. Pidge couldn’t see anything that looked like it had made a noise, but…

‘Allura, I’m going to go check out what that was.’

Allura looked concerned, but nodded. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘Be careful though, it could be structural instability.’

Pidge nodded and headed into the east side of the archive room. It was empty, just a collection of the same shelves and computer terminals as the west side. The only difference was the large door on the east wall. It was small, and pretty out of the way, but it caught Pidge’s eye because it seemed to be slightly ajar.

The first indicator that something was wrong was how easily the door opened.

There was no power in the automatic mechanisms of the doors. Whatever little energy Coran had routed to this section was sustaining a myriad of more important details; life-support, control panels, and the dim lighting. Allura was the only one who could open these doors, and she hadn’t touched this one.

Most doors on the floor were locked anyway, save a few that appeared to have been open when the castle had shut down the first time, so when Pidge tugged the door and it gave way with far less resistance than she had expected, she couldn’t help but feel a tad worried. It snapped aside like one would expect a porch sliding door to open, not a security door on an alien ship.

Pidge felt a chill go down her spine.

The darkness through the door was deep and full, and the silence within was stifling. In hindsight, Pidge knew she should have walked away, closed the door, and come back with any of the other Paladins. But she didn’t have the benefit of that hindsight yet, and instead of turning away, Pidge took a step inside.

A dozen pairs of glowing eyes opened and stared straight at her.

Pidge reeled back and started to shout for Allura, but her cry was cut short by a calamitous BANG as a thick metal wall slammed down in the archway, separating the east and west sides of the library - separating Pidge and Allura. The lights above flickered and fizzled out, plunging the room into darkness lit only by dull emergency lighting.

From behind her, inside the dark room, Pidge heard a chittering sound, and she did the only thing she knew to do.

She ran.

* * *

 

 _Hey_ , whispered a voice in the back of Pidge's head, _Remember that scene in_ Jurassic Park _?_

Pidge mentally screamed at herself to shut up.

She was crouched behind one of the shelves in the east archive room, now shut off from the west side - and Allura - by a daunting metal barricade. As she knelt down, listening to the creature move through the door and into the archive room, she had to admit it was a little like _Jurassic Park_ , but all thought on the matter was suddenly cut short as the thing, whatever it was, stopped moving.

The room was dead silent, so silent Pidge was scared to breathe.

Subconsciously, Pidge reached a hand into her pocket, feeling for her bayard. With a jolt she remembered she was unarmed, and her fingers closed around nothing. She hadn’t realised how used to her weapon she’d become, but now she didn’t have it and she felt utterly naked. Reality settled in.

She was trapped in a dark room with no weapon.

She was trapped in a dark room with no weapon, and _something_ was in there with her.

She didn't know how many of those things were in the room, let alone the castle, and she didn’t want to find out. A million different plans began to whirl through her head: how to kill it, how to escape without being seen. Maybe she could distract the thing and make a run for it? But could she assume the elevator would even work, and what about Allura?

The more escape plans she thought of the more her thoughts seemed to turn to the darker scenarios. She could see the headlines now:

_DUMB STUPID PALADIN DIES IN A LIBRARY, EATEN BY LIBRARY MONSTERS._

Pidge shook her head.

 _I can’t lose focus_ , she thought.

So she did the only productive thing she could think to do: she began to dig through her bag.

They hadn't packed a lot when they came to the castle, after all, their trip to the other side of the known universe hadn’t exactly been planned. In just over a day, they had gone from the Garrison to Keith’s weird desert shack to a wormhole at the end of the solar system with only the clothes on their backs and the contents of their few backpacks. It all read like a scary, SciFi-themed Dora the Explorer episode.

Only without the monkeys or educational value.

Pidge’s bag had been filled with computer components for the most part, remnants of all the tech she had managed to shove in before she, Hunk, and Lance had set out to investigate the crash in the desert.

God, that felt like years ago.

She also had her cellphone, which wasn’t dead but still pretty much useless, along with a water bottle, her wallet, and a couple loose pens. It was kind of funny; here she was in the far reaches of space, the only belongings to her name being the contents of an ill-prepared high-schooler’s backpack.

As she sifted through her bag’s contents, Pidge began to think of better plans. Maybe she could build something? She could try to _MacGyver_ herself out of this situation with some junky radio parts and a pen (probably not). It would help if she knew what she was up against, but it was too risky to peek around and look.

Then she got a terrible idea.

Pidge pulled out a pen - an ordinary, slightly chewed ballpoint - and threw across the room. It landed far away, behind a low shelf, with a sound that was almost deafening in the silence. It rattled her, but it worked; immediately Pidge heard more clicking, chittering noises and soft footfalls as whatever was in the room with her moved away to investigate the noise. This was her chance.

Pidge turned and poked her head around the side of the shelf and saw her terrible roommate illuminated by the emergency lighting.

It was a robot. It was big and, even in the dark, Pidge could see it’s white colouring and glowing joints. It’s design was sleek; a streamlined, ovaline body with two thin yet sturdy legs. In the middle of its body was some kind of pseudo-head, rounded and small, but dominated by two large, glowing eye-like lights.

It was facing away from Pidge, but she still felt her breath hitch in fear. _Okay_ \- she knew what she was facing now. She could fight a robot! All she had to do was come up with a plan.

With a chitter that Pidge now recognized as beeping, the robot seemed to be moving back towards the open door. Pidge bit back a sigh of relief.

Then the worst possible thing happened.

She hadn’t even realised she had left it on. It was such a benign task - one she had been too caught up in the archives to think about. But without so much as a warning, The thick silence of the archive room was sliced down the middle by the sharp beeping of her wristband alarm, signalling the hour.

The robot at the door turned around with the sound of squealing metal and looked straight at Pidge, eyes glowing in the dark.

Pidge leapt to her feet and staggered backwards. The robot screeched, its eyes turning red.

‘Fuck,’ Pidge muttered.

‘Pidge! Move!’

The shout from above seemed to catch both Pidge and her assailant by surprise, but Pidge recovered faster; she dove to the side and watched as a huge mass dropped from the balcony above. It landed square on the robot, crushing it beneath its considerable weight.

Pidge looked up and locked eyes with the princess. She was standing on the upper balcony, having just tossed an entire shelving unit over the railing. She looked disheveled and panicked, her hair a fly-away mess.

‘Come on!’ She yelled. ‘Up here!’

Pidge wasted no time in sprinting for the small staircase in the corner of the room. Rushing past the robot's crumpled form she caught an overpowering whiff of battery acid, and coughed, tears welling in her eyes and she scaled the stairs. 

As she reached the top she was immediately face to face with Allura. 

'Are you alright!?' The princess cried, grasping Pidge's hand in hers. Pidge nodded.

'How'd you get in here?' She asked. 'That door looked like it separated everything?'

Allura pointed upwards and Pidge looked up to see Allura's entrance route: an open ventilation cover. 

There was a creaking noise from down below, and the two girls whirled around to see dozens of eyes peering out from the east door. 

'We should go,' Allura said.

'Yep!' 

Allura climbed up into the shaft and pulled Pidge in after her. Pidge quickly closed the vent cover, and soon the two girls were off. They followed a twisting, meandering path of shafts; Allura was following some kind of map on her bracer. Pidge couldn't see it, but Allura's apparent confidence put her at a bit more ease. After what seemed like an age, Allura stopped by closed vent cover and looked down into whatever was below. 

‘I think I know where we are,' she whispered. 'Follow me.’

Allura pried open the vent cover and effortlessly dropped down into the hall below. Pidge followed suit. Allura looked at her bracer, then started running. She didn't wait for Pidge to follow, opting to grab the smaller girl's wrist and drag her along as she quietly slipped down the hall and into an alcove. The door - thankfully - wasn't locked. 

Before she went inside, Pidge looked over her shoulder. They were obviously in the same hall, but between the dark and distance, the exit was no longer visible. Pidge swallowed, and followed Allura into the room. Allura hurriedly shut the door after her.

The space was small, likely some kind of utility room, but it had the benefit of only having one, guardable door, so Pidge felt a bit safer immediately. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Allura silently moved past Pidge and sat down in the back of the room. She pulled out her bracer and began to work furiously on it.

'Come on...' Pidge her her muttering.

'What are you doing?' Pidge asked.

Allura sighed angrily at her work. 'I'm trying to establish a communication link with the castle below. If we can just get a hold of Coran or Shiro or _anybody_. But it's not working; there's some kind of interference.'

'Do you think it's those robots?' Pidge asked. 'Maybe we could try and get to the elevator?'

Allura shook her head. 'All of the power on this floor has been shut down, that includes doors. I tried to open the archive doors as soon as the barrier appeared, but I couldn't. Not even I can get them to work anymore.'

'Oh, well, this sucks...' Pidge said.

Allura sighed and let her bracer fall to her side - useless. She looked small and dejected, her hair curtained over her face again, but PIdge could tell she was upset. Not knowing what else to do, Pidge walked over to Allura and slowly sat down next to her.

 _This is all my fault_ _,_ she thought.

‘I’m so sorry Allura,' Pidge said quietly, her too-small voice betraying her fear. ‘I shouldn’t have opened that door. I… I knew it was suspicious but I just didn’t think of what could’ve been behind it.’

‘It’s alright Pidge,’ Allura said. ‘It’s my fault too. Nothing showed up on the scans but… we should have done more preliminary tests before coming up here. Quiznak, I was _stupid_.’

Allura looked scared and angry, and Pidge's stomach sank as she realised that that, too, was her fault.

It really wasn’t the time for this conversation, but there was a burning question Pidge needed to ask.

‘Are you doing this for me?’

Allura looked at her quizzically. ‘What?’

‘Are you… Were you… doing this for me?' Pidge struggled to find her words. 'Y'know... exploring the castle, digging through old archives, all of that?’

Allura looked shell-shocked. ‘Did you not like it?’ Her voice was quiet.

Pidge hadn’t expected that reaction. ‘N-No…’ she stuttered. ‘I liked it, a lot actually… at least until the robot stuff, but… If we were doing something more girly we wouldn’t be stuck up here… and I feel like that's my fault... I would never have wanted you to do something you didn’t want to just so I’d have a good time, but... we did... and now we're here.’

Silence hung in the air.

‘What did you think we’d be doing?’

Pidge felt her face redden. ‘Like… doing makeup, or watching movies, or talking about the boys we like.’ It sounded stupid when she said it outloud.

Allura looked confused. ‘Did you… Did you _want_ to talk about the boys you like?’

‘Ew, god, no.’ Pidge laughed. ‘I’m not into ANY of that, but it’s just… I guess that’s what I thought _you’d_ want to do…’

Allura shifted uncomfortably.

‘I guess I’m not very good at this hanging out thing, am I?’ She said with a wan smile.

Pidge’s heart sank. Of _course_ Allura was nervous, how could she have been so shortsighted to not notice it? Allura had no idea what she was doing either. She was just doing this to hang out with Pidge, to spend time with her...

Allura continued speaking. ‘I suppose I could have done those things… I like movies and makeup, but I like other things too! I like flying the castle, I like fighting alongside you, I like learning about your culture! And when Lance said I should have a girl's night with you I thought maybe I shouldn't, because you didn't seem like the kind of person who'd enjoy what he described and I wasn't even sure you'd like to be around me. I have been kind of… pushy in the past.’

Allura turned to her and smiled.

‘But I thought about what we had in common. How you love technology and learning about Altea, and how I like sharing my culture with you. So I thought, maybe, I could bring you here and we could... do this together. I never had a lot of friends growing up, let alone any girls my age to be around. So, I’m sorry if I came off as too strong... I don't really know what's expected.’

There was a beat of silence.

‘Me neither,’ said Pidge.

‘Really?’

‘Pfft! Have you seen me!?’

Allura laughed at this, which actually did a lot to help Pidge’s mood.

‘I had a lot of guy friends growing up,’ Pidge continued. ‘A few girls but… it was mostly just my brother. Then Lance and Hunk, but they’re about as ladylike as a pile of rocks…’

Pidge knotted her hands together nervously. ‘You’re sort of my first proper “girl friend” and… well, I was kind of worried.’

‘Why?’ Allura asked softly.

‘You're so… _you_. You always wear dresses and are super poised and collected and elegant and awesome. I was worried because I know you want a person like you to be able to talk to, but I'm not like you, I don't know if I can be the friend you need.’

‘Oh, Pidge…’

Pidge tucked her knees up to her chin and buried her head in her arms.

Allura didn’t say anything for awhile, the only sound was the distant chittering of the robots. Finally, in a shaky voice, Allura spoke.

‘I'm glad you think I'm poised and collected but... I'm really not.’

Pidge gave a muffled laugh into her arms. ‘I noticed.’

‘When I was younger I had my whole future mapped out for me. I was a princess, set to inherit an empire. It was daunting, the idea that I'd have to be all these things, but at least I knew.' She looked solemn. 'Then the war happened and now I'm here, the last of my people, and it's just…  not what I thought my role would be. But then...'

‘Then?’

Allura smiled. ‘Then I met you, Pidge.’

Pidge looked up. ‘Me?’

‘Yes!’ Allura smiled wider. ‘You’re funny and intelligent and strong. You’re a capable pilot and an incredible technician and probably the smartest one in a room on any given day… and you’re a _girl_ . It was shocking at first because you didn’t act like what I had grown up seeing as feminine. You’re _nothing_ like me!’

Allura looked at Pidge softly. ‘Do you remember a while ago, when you said you were leaving Voltron to go look for your family?’

Pidge felt herself flush. ‘Yeah, I’m… sorry about that.’

‘Actually, in a way, I kind of admired you for that.’ 

‘What? Why?’

‘Well, you knew what you wanted to do,' Allura explained. 'You had a goal and, if I’m not mistaken, it’s still your goal. You want to find your family. You don’t… _adhere_. You follow your own path and I admire that about you, Pidge. You showed me I could be more than just the roles people thought I had to be. I'm allowed to be a princess and a commander and _me_ at the same time. I'm allowed to be just a girl, and I'm allowed to be as scared as I am.’

The girls sat there for a long, the distant sounds of the robots all but forgotten as their words to each other sank in in the darkness.

‘I'm glad you're my friend, Allura,' Pidge said finally.

Pidge wasn't looking, but she could here the smile in Allura's voice. ‘I'm glad you're my friend too, Pidge.’

‘You wanna get out of here?’

‘Absolutely.’

'We need to figure out what those things are, first of all,' Pidge said. 'If they're what's disrupting the power, we'll have to figure out how they're doing it so we can turn it back on.'

'Right,' said Allura. 'It's strange... I feel like I should know what they are... but I can't remember.'

‘Well, let's think about what they were doing.' Pidge's mind whirred into gear. 'They showed up right after you took that drive with the pictures.’

‘It’s like… they didn’t want me to take it.' Allura's eyes gleamed in the dim light.

‘Exactly, whatever they are, they’re like… some sort of crazy, strict librarians.’

Allura gasped so loud it made Pidge jump.

‘I remember what they are!’ She exclaimed, grabbing Pidge’s hands excitedly.

‘Great! Care to share?’

‘They're called Custodians,’ Allura said. ‘They're programmed to be the guardians of the archives!’

‘Wait, so they're Altean tech?’

‘Indeed. In my day they were little more than librarians, which explains why I didn’t recognize them in their aggressive state. They’re part of the archival system, they stop people from disturbing the records… That must be why they didn’t show up on the scanners as outside technology!’

Pidge’s eyes widened as the pieces clicked into place. ‘They would have registered as part of the castle’s security systems!’

‘We have to get to the Custodian control panel, it will be located in their storage area.’

‘You mean that room FULL of robots we barely escaped from?’

‘Yes… It’s on a closed power system so if the castle gets disabled the Custodians can still function. It will be heavily guarded, but it’s the only way to shut them all down at once with the floor’s main power down.’

‘But, how are we going to get past them? I don’t have my bayard or any-’ Pidge broke off in a gasp. ‘The paladin armour… the ceremonial one.’

Allura cocked an eyebrow. ‘What about it?’

Pidge turned to her excitedly. ‘It has a bayard! We- _You_ , can use it!’

‘What!? No I can’t!’

‘You said so! You said you can sub in for all of us, can’t you?’

‘In _theory_ _!_ ’ Allura cried, ‘I’ve never done it before! My _father_ never even had to do it!’

‘Forget your dad! Forget everyone else! You're the pilot of this rust bucket, Allura! And you sure as hell have enough heart and passion and smarts and leadership-ness and… _whatever the hell Lance is supposed to have_ ... to be able to do our jobs for us any day! If anyone can do this it’s _you_ , Allura.’

The other girl sat stunned for a moment, and looked as if she was about to speak before the sound of metal tearing signalled their time was up. Snapping back to reality, the two girls shared a glance. Allura nodded.

‘Let’s move.’

* * *

 

After a few minutes of planning, Allura gave Pidge a boost back into the ventilation shaft.

‘We’ll have to be coordinated,’ Allura said, expertly climbing inside. ‘I’ll go the long way and get the bayard from the west room. I’ll cause a distraction and then-’

‘Then I’ll drop into the control room and disable them from there.’

‘Good luck,’ Allura said with a nervous smile.

‘You too, princess,’ Pidge replied. And they were both off.

Pidge and Allura silently meandered back the way they had come, and Allura pointed Pidge towards the vent in the control room before taking off towards the west archive. Pidge crawled over and peered through the gate. There was no visible movement, but she still waited. Allura had said to wait 3 minutes before dropping in, so she'd have time to grab the bayard and get back in the vents before Pidge dropped in. Pidge sat quietly and watched the clock on her wristband tick by. _3 minutes... 2 minutes... 1 minutes..._

Pidge dropped lightly into the control room and looked around, careful to stay in the relatively safe shadows along the walls. There were no Custodians around, but she could hear them out in the main archives, chittering and clicking. The control room wasn't empty however; in the dim light it took her eyes a moment to adjust but when they did she saw her surroundings in more detail. The room was small, and in the center sat a large control dock, ebbing and glowing with a soft blue light. Pidge could see the controls she'd need to shut down the robots. But she also saw something else. 

The room was full of data drives, piled high around the floor. 

_They had moved them into the control room, they were protecting them._

It made sense; as protectors of the archives the Custodians probably viewed Pidge and Allura as a threat, especially after Allura had pocketed that hologram. Stowing all of the records in the control room was likely a security measure. But if the data drives were here...

Pidge turned slowly, and her worst fear was confirmed. The ceremonial paladin armour lay on the group to her left, sprawled across the floor between piles of data drives and ancient tools. 

It wasn't in the archives anymore. Allura was in the wrong place. 

Pidge jumped into action before she could even stop to think, rushing over to the armour and grabbing the bayard. It lay dormant in her hands, white and unmoving. Fear coursed through her chest, of course nothing would happen; this wasn't her armour. So she did the only thing she could.

'Allura!' She yelled, and there was a crash from outside as a vent cover came crashing to the floor. From her position inside the control room, Pidge watched Allura's lithe form drop from the vents in the ceiling and land in the middle of the archive room. Pidge felt a rush of relief, Allura had probably also noticed the absence of the armour in the west room.

As Allura hit the ground the darkness around her seemed to crack open, and dozens of eyes flickered to life around the princess. At least 6 Custodians reared up on their spindly white legs, white lighting flashing red as they locked on to the intruder. Pidge and Allura locked eyes, and the princess nodded.

‘Heads up!’ Pidge ran to the doorway and tossed the bayard across the room.

Allura caught it and for a terrible second nothing happened. Then, in a flash of light, it transformed in the princess's hands. It was a long quarterstaff, buzzing on each end with pink electricity. The weapon crackled, pink light illuminating Allura’s shocked yet determined expression.

‘Sick,’ breathed Pidge.

Allura gripped the staff tightly, as if making sure it was real and tangible. She looked up at Pidge, mouth set in a determined line.

‘Let’s go,’ she said.

Allura slashed the quarterstaff in front of her in a wide arc, slicing through the mid-sections of three Custodians, all of which shuddered as a pink electric pulse coursed through their bodies and crumpled to the floor. Without missing a beat, Allura spun on her heel, thrusting forward and driving her spear through one of the other Custodians. It screeched in that chittering howl before falling silent, its eyes fading to black. 

The fight was a tangle of colour and light. In the darkened archive room, the only light was from the emergency panels along the floor, the custodians, and Allura's staff. With each slash of her weapon Allura briefly illuminated her surroundings in violent, pink light. It was almost like a rave (though Pidge had never been to one), with the flashes of electricity capturing brief snapshots of the battle. Allura knocking a Custodian's head off. Allura driving the spear through two Custodians at once. Allura in mid air, her weapon just about to pierce a robot from above. 

Allura seemed to glow in the fight - literally. Her silver hair was reflecting the pink light, the blue and red of the Custodians, and the soft yellow of the emergency lights to form a shimmering rainbow in her hair. She moved like a dancer too. In the small flashes of the fight Pidge watched Allura dispatch her attackers with more grace than was probably necessary. It was oddly transfixing.

But Pidge knew she couldn’t just stand and watch. Even though Allura was undeniably kicking ass, there seemed to be no end to the waves of Custodians rushing at her from the shadows of the archive room. Allura wouldn't be able to hold them back forever, so Pidge turned back to the control panel and began to decode it. It wasn’t too difficult of a system to understand, and as she bypassed security measure after security measure it became clear all she needed to do was-

There was a chittering screech behind her and Pidge whirled around just in time to see a Custodian burst through the door.

It’s glowing eyes locked onto hers and its face began to come apart, segmenting and splitting into long, claw-like sections that spread outwards like insect legs. In the center of this maw were rows of sharp metal teeth, whirring and snapping.

‘It's a face-hugger?!’ Pidge screamed

 _Nice last words_ , she thought.

It wasn't a face-hugger, of course. Because 1) _Alien_ was, as far as Pidge knew, a work of fiction, 2) this one was a robot, and 3) because it was double the size and now glowing bright blue. But it was pretty similar.

Pidge stumbled backwards as the Custodian’s giant maw reared over her. But just before it could do the deed, a bright pink spear of electricity ripped through the Custodian’s body and sent it crashing to the floor.

Purple fluid exploded from the robot’s body, spraying in every direction, drenching Pidge and Allura - who stood in the doorway, quarterstaff at the ready.

‘Ugh, gross!!’ Pidge spit the goo out of her mouth. It smelled like battery acid but tasted like grape, neither of which was very comforting. Through the goo Allura smiled at her.

‘You’ve got this Pidge!’ She cried, and turned back to face the row of Custodians moving closer towards them.

Pidge turned back to the control panel.

No confirmation button appeared on screen, instead, it flashed with a message.

ATTACH SECURITY CONSOLE TO CONFIRM DEACTIVATION.

The control panel spat out a connection cable and, as she put two and two together, Pidge was baffled and almost offended. Altean technology was supposed to be sleek and futuristic and wireless, what the hell was this?

‘We need a security console to connect to the control panel!’ She yelled, hoping Allura could hear.

‘I don’t have one!’ Allura cried. ‘That’s something a guard would have carried.’

‘Shit.’ _Think, Pidge, Think._

‘Is there any other way around it?’ Allura yelled. Pidge bit her lip nervously. _Think, think, think..._

Pidge looked at the cable that was supposed to connect the security console. It was uncomfortably familiar, and that familiarity grew and grew until the realisation hit her like a sack of bricks.

‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me…’

It had to be the weirdest, luckiest break in the entirety of collective human history.

Allura slashed upwards with her staff, tearing the Custodian she was fighting in half and spraying another helping of purple goo in every direction. Its husk fell the the floor with a clatter, but she had no time to catch her breath before two more Custodians skittered over to take the fallen one’s place. Allura wiped her face and raised her staff again, breathing heavily.

‘Pidge! I don’t think I can hold them off much longer!’

‘Don’t worry, I got this!’ Pidge yelled, and all of a sudden the control panel lit up like a Christmas Tree.

There Pidge stood, her phone held high, plugged into the control panel. The screen was cracked and flickering, but the image on it was clear: A big red button, and the Altean word for “deactivate”.

‘Next time, assholes,’ Pidge said with a grin, ‘Don’t use a lightning cable.’

She pressed the button.

* * *

 

The girls collapsed in the elevator, Allura still holding her quarterstaff, Pidge holding a Custodian leg (“a souvenir!” she’d exclaimed), both covered in purple goo.

‘Those were… bad librarians,’ Pidge said. Allura giggled.

‘Very bad, I agree.’

The ride down was far too smooth and the alien Muzak was not helping. Pidge figured they must look ridiculous, two girls slumped on the floor of a pristine white elevator, covered in dust and weird, robot gak. Pidge had not expected to come out of girl’s night looking dirtier than how she’d come in.

'This was a disaster, wasn't it,' Allura said. 

'Kind of,' Pidge said. 'By definition yes. But...'

'But?'

'I did have fun.'

'It wasn't really a "girl's night" though, was it?' Allura began to absently pluck purple goo out of her hair. Pidge knew she still felt bad about how pear-shaped the night went, but honestly, she didn't need to feel that way. Pidge HAD had a lot of fun, in a weird way. She had got to fight alongside Allura, hack some old Altean tech, and before that she had spent a good two hours exploring an amazing library. 

She couldn't believe now that she had had such low expectations of Allura. So what if she was girly, she was Allura, first and foremost. Any night with her would have been enjoyable, but she had gone out of her way to find something they could do together. She had noticed Pidge's interests, found the things they had in common, and had crafted an experience so special even a robot attack hadn't been enough to ruin the night for Pidge. 

'It may not have been a traditional girl's night,' Pidge said. 'But it was _our night._ Like you said... we shouldn't adhere. We should do our own thing and I think that might be enough... don't you?'

Pidge looked up at her friend and smiled. 'I had a good time Allura, thank you.'

Allura matched her smile for a moment before giving a very unattractive snort.

'Hey!' Pidge protested as Allura burst into a fit of giggles. 

'I'm sorry,' she said, delicately wiping away a tear. 'You're being very kind but you look ridiculous.'

Pidge was suddenly hyper aware of the fact she was drenched in purple goo.

'You look ridiculous too!' She cried. Allura laughed harder. 

‘So can you really connect with all the lions like that?’ Pidge asked. Allura looked down at the spear in her hands.

‘Well, in theory. Bayards are a bit easier to sway, though. This may have been a fluke.'

‘Don't sell yourself short! That was _amazing_! You kicked ass up there, Allura!'

'Thank you Pidge,' Allura said, almost reverently. 'For everything.'

'You too,' Pidge said softly. 

Then she got an idea.

‘If you can connect with the lions, would you be able to, like, detect errors and stuff?' Allura raised an eyebrow at the question. Pidge stammered forward. 'I-I m-mean, usually I get Coran or Hunk to help but… if you want you could come down some time and help me work on Green.’

Allura's face lit up and she clapped her hands together in excitement.

‘Really?!’ She gasped, eyes practically sparkling. ‘I'd love to!!’

‘Great!’ Pidge said, her face breaking into a grin. ‘We'll make it another girl's night.’

* * *

 

_two days later._

 

‘What are they doing?’

‘Sit down, Lance.’

Shiro barely glanced up from his reading as he spoke.

‘No, really, what are they doing with those tanks?’

‘Is that gasoline?’

‘Keith, stop encouraging him.'

Keith was up on the windowsill too, he and Lance looking down into the training area with twin looks of intrigue. Neither was even remotely listening to Shiro anymore.

‘Hunk, seriously, come look at this.’ Lance waved his friend over. Hunk, obviously not caring all that much, meandered to his side.

‘What do they have?’ He asked more out of politeness than actual interest.

'Barrels of something,' Keith observed. ‘What is it?’

‘Bleach, lighter fluid, ammonia, gasoline?' Lance rattled off a few guesses. 'I dunno, lady stuff.’

None of it sounded like lady stuff. Shiro raised an eyebrow at Hunk, who shrugged and peered down into the training area.  

‘Woah,' he mumbled. 'Are you serious?’

‘Also,' Lance continued, his grin audible, 'Allura's wearing coveralls and my soul may currently be leaving my body.’

The sharp sound of Keith slapping Lance over the head was not unwelcome.

 

‘ _Gghh_ … Move!’

Allura turned around to face Pidge, barrel hefted over her shoulder. ‘I can carry that if it’s too much for you, Pidge,’ she said with a playful smile.

Pidge grunted against the weight of her own barrel. ‘No, no, no! I’m good. I can do this.’

Pidge leaned her entire body against the barrel, but only succeeded in sending it slowly rolling across the training room floor. It was better than nothing, she supposed.

‘Okay,’ panted Pidge, wiping sweat off her forehead. ‘I’m convinced yours is lighter.’

Allura laughed and picked up Pidge’s discarded barrel, effortlessly hoisting it onto her other shoulder.

‘Dammit,’ Pidge muttered.

The two girls made their way to the centre of the training floor where Allura placed the two barrels on the ground and opened their lids, revealing that both were filled to the brim with purple Custodian goop.

‘Okay,’ said Pidge, clapping her hands together. ‘Let’s get started.’

‘What’s the plan again?’ Allura asked.

Pidge pushed her glasses up and smiled. ‘After our fight with the Custodians I decided to run some tests on their goo and I realised that, under the right conditions, it can produce some interesting effects. Effects ranging from weird to very very dangerous.’

Allura cocked an eyebrow. ‘Are we going to test it then?’

‘Oh no! Not us! Absolutely not, Allura, I’d never do that to you.’

Pidge turned to the viewing deck. ‘HEY LANCE!’ She yelled. ‘YOU UP THERE?’

It took a second but the intercom chimed in. ‘Hell yeah I am!’

‘Cool!' Pidge grinned a little maliciously. 'Come down here, we have a job for you guys!’

‘Will do, Pidge!’

Pidge turned to Allura. ‘We’re gonna test it on them,’ she whispered.

Allura laughed, and Pidge beamed.

Girl's night _had_ been a good idea after all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Was this entire fic an excuse to use that one Jeremy Shada line from Adventure Time? Who knows.
> 
> Thanks to http://panwithoutaplan.tumblr.com/ for softly forcing me to post this.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! This is the first fic I've ever posted so I'm a bit nervous. If you've made it this far thanks! You're awesome!


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